Strategic Voting in 2024

1) Vote for a Presidential candidate who opposes the genocide of Palestinians (West, Stein, or De La Cruz).   Blue MAGA types will say this is "voting for Trump," but it is not.  At most, it is disciplining the lefter Presidential candidate.  The lefter party must be forced to run anti-Genocide Presidential candidates to win.

2) Vote for Congressional and State candidates who can best defeat the fascist theocracy supported by Red MAGA.  Generally speaking, this means voting for Democrats.

I am not a great admirer of Saul Alinsky.  I think his movement for reform (not revolution) had many weaknesses and ultimately fizzled out.  It was fundamentally flawed because Alinsky refused to have any fundamental ideas about what society should be like.  He was opposed to all "-isms".  In contrast, I do have a fundamental idea of what society should be like.  I am a Communist.

However, I recognize Alinsky as a great strategic thinker.  He won his first campaign, and a few others, by following the rules he outlined in Rules for Radicals.  Some of those rules embody excellent strategic thinking.

One of his central rules was to pick out a single figure of the "opposition" and demonize them.  It is important not to demonize everyone apparently in opposition because (1) that doesn't work, and (2) if the single figure can be defeated (which will be hard enough) it will put pressure on the others to change.  THEN, if it still doesn't usher in the desired change, pick out another single figure, and so on.  We must recognize the limits to our power--we can't change the whole society or slate of candidates or opposition at once.

He confessed that few problems are caused by a single person.  Demonizing just one person is a simplification.  But sometimes simplification is necessary to win, and everybody does it to one degree or another.  We should not feel that it is immoral or dishonest, in contrast it it being honest with ourselves about how power works.

Most state and congressional representatives have little control over foreign policy.  (It could be argued that even the President may not have that much control, he is largely owned and operated by the Deep State.)  It is not wise, practical, or even possible to demonize them all at the cost of a Red MAGA wave.  The US is already deeply into fascism (such as the crackdowns on student protestors and they way they are characterized by politicians including Biden and Eric Adams.  But believe me, things can (and will!) get much worse before they are likely to get any better.  To not realize how much worse things could get is a fundamental failure of imagination.

It is the lack of this sort of strategic thinking that generally has me opposing the Green Party as such.  They want to treat all Democrats and all Republicans as the same.  Alinsky would predict this would lead nowhere, and in fact it has led nowhere.